3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

The privilege of thinking has faced two challenges in recent years. The advent of artificial intelligence has called into question how unique thinking is when cognition can easily be mimicked, if not (re)produced, in machines through statistical models of language. An equally prevalent, if opposing, development in critical theory is the expansion of thought to include all purposeful action, such as the spreading of information among trees regarding available resources. The first half of the semester will be devoted to the definition of thinking offered by Aristotle and its interpretation in selected texts by Fichte, Hegel, and Marx. The second half will consider the surge of interest in automatons in romantic literature (Novalis, Hoffmann, Kleist and Poe) and culminating in Kafka’s “Report to an Academy.